Digital Career is about the digital mindset

The rapidly evolving 21st century business environment requires a diversified array of specialised skill-sets. From critical problem solving to design thinking to collaborative and communication techniques, these proficiencies are tailor made for corporate excellence as they enable innovation and business advancement. It has been long established that constant innovation is at the heart of all progress. For a company to succeed, it must keep innovating and designing new product/ services that can effectively address various consumer expectations and needs. In such a dynamic corporate climate the problem-solution tangent evolves at a relentless rate and only professionals with a T-shaped skill set can resolve its vast challenges.   

 

The T shape is an amalgamation of in-depth skill-sets which are essential for addressing unfamiliar quandaries at a rapid pace. T-shaped abilities not only enable professionals to build exhaustive proficiencies in one or two associated domains but also display ample practical knowhow across varied disciplines. As they are able gain exposure across a diverse array of skill-sets, they are able to perform and collaborate better across multiple inter-disciplinary fields. 

 

There is a heightened demand in the current job industry for professionals with assorted balance of two distinct skill-sets, namely - major skills and minor skills. This is well exemplified in emerging cutting-edge fields of innovation like AI which requires professionals to be adept in mathematics as well as coding, or in the designing domain where interaction designers and visual designers are being combined under a singular umbrella cover as UX designers.   

 

Such two or more distinctive yet converging skill-sets together form the professional expertise of an individual. These are also known as multiple mountain-shaped skills due to apparent depth in various overlapping skill-sets. In other words a T-shaped employee will be adroit in managing many different fields of expertise. The corporate industry too shows a high preference for such personnel and is always eager to higher them at the first available opportunity. 

 

These diversified skill-sets are also gaining major predominance across hiring channels also because of the sheer number of industries that demand such a critical mix of abilities. The advent of technological across various verticals such as healthcare, banking, insurance, manufacturing, etc has spawned a new category of the all-round professional who can effectively dabble across various fronts. 

 

He or she should possess differing abilities that are slated to milk maximum value returns in the future as research, AI principles, etcetera. Optimising such an extensive number of skills in professionals will also help in expediting the creative hunt for the Covid-19 vaccine which is still in the latent stages of global initiation.   

 

Thanks to the revamped pedagogical policy under the 2020 NEP program, student aspirants can select from a staggering range of electives courses for in-depth specialization and building diverse skill-sets. With deep-seated transformations in the Indian educational system underway, the various universities and colleges will prove to be the perfect haven for collating vast expanses of varied knowledge disciplines. 

 

New-age skilltech institutes are now offering an expansive number of next-gen allied courses across various proficiencies such as Design, RPA, robotics, cybersecurity, and AI/ML for students across the country. These will not only help them acquire numerous in-demand skill-sets imperative for thriving in the current business climate but also prepare them for jobs of the future. The future is, indeed, digital, and only those with diversified skillsets will make it big in the exciting times ahead.       

 

- Written by Prof. Col. Shishir Kumar. The author is Director, ImaginXP